In the United States, at least, a good deal of the public teaching was done by those self-appointed experts on "how to act": the authors of etiquette books. A casual purview of such books from 1881 to 1962 reveals both a concentration on explicit instructions for public behavior during the period when the early industrial city in the United States was at its most confusing, and a gradually decreasing concern with these matters as the modern city came into its own.

XREF: Ties to sociological work on social norms and the rise of urban anonymity, similar to Erving Goffman's studies of public behavior.

XREF: Connects to sociological accounts of urban anonymity and the breakdown of small-community behavior norms in industrializing cities.

Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order a…, loc. 673